CHORALE TO LIFT VOICES FOR ‘AMAHL’

Since composer Gian-Carlo Menotti wrote “Amahl and the Night Visitors” in 1951, he has turned out more ambitious operas. But “Amahl” remains one of his best known works. The opera’s Christmas themes of generosity and redemption have made it a seasonal staple.

Members of the Master Chorale of Orange County will give the opera two fully staged performances Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, with 14-year-old soprano Mitch Lowe of Riverside playing Amahl.

“It is a very lyric and melodic opera about a crippled boy named Amahl who offers his crutch to the Christ child as a gift and in so doing is healed instantaneously of his affliction,” said Maurice Allard, musical director for the chorale. “The most dramatic moment in the opera is when he walks for the first time.”

The story includes the Three Wise Men--Balthazar, Kaspar and Melchior--who stay at Amahl’s home while on their way to pay respects to the Christ child. The Italian-born Menotti, 75, had written in notes accompanying an RCA recording of the opera that Christmas gifts were brought to his childhood home by the kings, not Santa Claus. Menotti wrote that, imagining the kings’ annual arrival, he heard “the weird cadence of their song in the dark distance.”

When NBC commissioned Menotti to write an opera for television in 1951, he suffered creative block. “I simply didn’t have one idea in my head,” the composer said in that record cover memoir. “One November afternoon, as I was walking rather gloomily through the rooms of the Metropolitan Museum, I chanced to stop in front of the ‘Adoration of the Kings’ by Hieronymus Bosch, and as I was looking at it, suddenly I heard again, coming from the distant blue hills, the weird song of the three kings.

“I then realized they had come back to me and had brought me a gift.”

The 50-minute opera is being directed at the Center by Richard Odle, head costumer of the South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, and will be accompanied by an ensemble of about 50 musicians, Allard said. Lowe has sung the lead role of the crippled shepherd boy in other local productions.

The evening performance Sunday has been sold out, but tickets remain for a 2:30 p.m. matinee that day. The Californians, the chorale’s pop group, will sing selections after the opera, and there will also be a sing-along of various Christmas carols.

Tickets are on sale for $4 and $12, and can be reserved by calling the Center at 556-ARTS.